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Comment Re:Time for a revolution (Score 1) 424

Guess what?

They can do this at any time, for any reason, regardless of Bitcoin or not, no matter what is or is not true and regardless of what you can or can not prove.

There is no way to stop psychopathic predators from preying - it's what they do.

On the other hand we can use technology to protect ourselves. You can't deny that Bitcoin and associated technologies make their job of identifying and attacking targets more difficult by orders of magnituide.

Perhaps difficult enough that predation is no longer profitable.

I am fascinated by Tim May's crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word "anarchy", in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary. It's a community where the threat of violence is impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations.

Maybe it won't work, but it's the best chance we have to create a genuinely peaceful world.

Comment Re:Time for a revolution (Score 2) 424

You do understand that a simple dead mans switch into a multisig account or an nTimelock will make it easy for me to prove to the people torturing me that I know longer have access to the funds and that they cannot be taken or seized right?

Come on, don't ruin the surprise!

Let them dig themselves in deeper with their empty threats before revealing that financial cryptographers are already two steps ahead of them.

It's more fun that way.

Comment Re:Time for a revolution (Score 1) 424

What happens when bitcoin crashes?

When the exchange rate goes down, I interpret it as a pay raise.

Right now, my expenses are far lower than my income, so I'm adding to my savings substantially every month.

Over the last few months as the exchange rate has gone down, the result has been that the number of bitcoins I am paid has been going up, therefore the rate at which my savings is accumulating has been increasing.

Intra-month fluctuations don't affect me, because I sell what I need to cover expenses on the same day that I get paid.

I don't mind if the USD/BTC exchange rate keeps going down for a while - I'm decades away from needing to draw down on my savings.

Also as you live in the USA

If I can work for a Swiss software company from the USA, I can also do the same work from any part of the world that has a decent internet connection.

Comment Re:Time for a revolution (Score 5, Informative) 424

The revolution already happened - it's called Bitcoin.

I've spent the last year bank-free.

I live in the US, but work for a Swiss software company and get paid the CHF equivalent of $160k/year.

They pay me in Bitcoin.

I have no bank account.

Everything I need to buy I either pay for directly in Bitcoin, or in cash.

When I need cash, I use LocalBitcoins to find somebody who wants to trade.

The "massive bureaucracy with its bloated laws and indifferent employees" can fuck off. They can point their guns at secp256k1 all they want but it won't do them any good.

I just have to laugh at people who still care about or participate in politics - it's a complete waste of time. Within a few years Bitcoin has accomplished the change which many decades of voting have failed to provide.

Comment Re:global warmening worse than we thought... (Score 3, Interesting) 571

I remember a few years back there was a page on the Los Alamos lab web site that talked about "POPS fusion" experiments.

Basically like IEC fusion, but instead of trying to maintain constant pressure, allow the pressure to oscillate regularly.

Then that page dissapeared.

I wonder if this announcement is about the same thing.

Comment Re:Don't over generalize (Score 1) 728

However, no-one would question that what actually occurred was, in fact, theft. No-one would ask whether the car owner wanted it to happen.

The owner's insurance company would ask both of those questions as part of their investigation prior to paying out a claim.

No-one would have suggested the victim should have had a less attractive car.

In my life I have observed that people with more expensive (at-risk for theft) cars devote more resources to protecting them than people with less expensive cars. I've also see the same thing with houses and other posessions.

Still not seeing why, if self-protection against crime is considered the responsibility of the potential victim in every other situation, rape should be treated as a special case.

Every individual is responsible for their own self protection. This responsibility in no way reduces the culpability of criminals. This isn't contraversial when you talk about 99.9% of crimes, so why is so much effort being directed into making it a "gender issue"?

Comment Re:Don't over generalize (Score 0) 728

I shouldn't dignify your ad hominem attack with a reply, but for the benefit of other people reading I'll provide a parable:

Manager: Now that we're finished cleaning up our servers, let's talk about how the hacker got in and how we can stop it from happening in the future. It seems that you set up our systems to allow root logins via telnet, and frequently logged in via public unencrypted wifi.
Sysadmin: Yes, that's the most convienient way for me to work.
Manager: Do you think that's prudent, given the circumstances? Maybe you should upgrade to SSH.
Sysadmin: Why should I have to do that? Hackers should be attempting to break into our servers in the first place.
Manager: Yes, that is true and also beside the point. Hackers do exist and so you need to take precautions to keep them out. That's your job.
Sysadmin: It isn't fair! Why should I need to learn how to keep the hackers out of the server? We should teach hackers not to break into other people's systems instead.
Manager: I agree that it's not fair, however even if everybody dropped everything everything else and started working on reeducating malicious hackers tomorrow, it would still take time to accomplish, and in the meantime the servers still need to be hardened against attack.
Sysadmin: I don't want to stop using telnet. It's not my fault malicious hackers exist and I'm not going to change what I'm doing because of them.
Manager: In that case, we have no choice but to find a replacement sysadmin while we also press charges against the hacker. Regardless of whether it's fair or not the job of hardening the servers against attack has to be done and if you're not willing to do it we must find somebody who will.
Sysadmin: OMG why are you attacking me now?! #waronsysadmins

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